WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO THAT PIANO?

NAVONA RECORDS COLLECTIONS | 5 CD SET

John Cage
The Bowed Piano Ensemble
Stephen Scott
Sidney Bailin
Gheorghe Costinescu
Matthew Durrant
Rachel Lee Guthrie
Amir Zaheri
Richard Pressley
Byron Petty
Ron Nagorcka

From Navona Records comes an exciting new CD bundle of five previous releases featuring the piano at its most prepared and extended. WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO THAT PIANO? features composers and artists dedicated to finding the most adventurous and compelling sounds that the piano has to offer. Opening with SONATAS AND INTERLUDES IN A LANDSCAPE, composed by John Cage, the virtual godfather of prepared piano, and performed by the virtuosic Kate Boyd, this CD bundle contains one of the most eclectic collections of solo piano music a listener will ever encounter.

ICE & FIRE, first released in November 2013 by Navona Records, features six compositions by Stephen Scott for the Bowed Piano Ensemble, including Afternoon of a Fire, written for bowed piano and improvised Native American Flute in memory of a wildfire that occurred in his native Colorado. The album also includes experimental works that interpret the concept of drones, a piece with five miniatures for bowed piano, and Scott’s first written piece for voice and bowed piano.

Originally released on Ravello Records in May 2016, 16-2-60-N-5: WORKS FOR ELECTRONICS & PIANO, by composer and pianist Sidney Bailin, shows how musical technique can exist solely to help him tell his secrets. A combination of piano and electroacoustic works, 16-2-60-N-5 transforms patterns and structures into a viscerally and emotionally gripping sound experience.

FELT, a compilation for solo piano first offered by Navona Records in February 2015, presents the works of a number of composers including Matthew Durrant and Byron Petty. With each composer comes a subtly different perception of what the piano is capable, a degree of variation that presents itself repeatedly in the kaleidoscopic collection of pieces included on this release.

On AN EVOLVING CYCLE, Gheorghe Costinescu’s second Ravello Records album, first released in November 2013, the composer explores the manner in which keyboard idioms evolved from Baroque to 21st-Century contemporary, charting the evolution of form and technique with a deft control of style.

Throughout this five-disc collection, the composers and performers run the gamut of stylistic and physical variations possible for the piano and its repertoire.  It seems only fitting that these albums would ultimately be combined into a single compendium of the piano at its finest, and we are pleased to finally offer, in collected form, WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO THAT PIANO?

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FELT

STRIKING WORKS FOR SOLO PIANO

Karolina Rojahn, J. Bradley Baker, Robert A. Baker piano

A compilation for solo piano offered by Navona Records, presents an array of techniques and themes to illustrate the piano’s dexterous capacity for limitless expression and tonal colors.

In Three Excursions for Piano, Matthew Durrant explores various angles of contemporary composition – 12-tone rows, bitonality and modality, and repetition and rhythmic propulsion. Rachel Lee Guthrie’s Winter is an impressionistic piece inspired by the sublimity of mid-western winter landscapes, depicting the imagery of northern winds blowing across the countryside and gently falling snow blanketing the chilling earth. In Prelude to the Holy Dark, Amir Zaheri illustrates the idea of welcoming a return to the time before electricity, while expressing the angst and frustration found in the act of regression. Written for the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth, in memoriam by Richard Pressley focuses on the struggle and ultimate collapse of the musical material toward an elusive goal. The two-movement work by Byron Petty, Propuntal Displays, references the standard teaching literature of J.S. Bach, displaying episodes of increasing difficulty and counterpoint techniques. Anything by Ron Nagorcka is a work refined by ear rather than theory, developing from a random application of notes in a rhythmic structure. Robert A. Baker presents two works, Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?, a line from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 65 which Baker considers to “appropriately reflect a near exact narrative of the musical discourse” and Valence I, whose meaning is left to the interpretation of the listener.

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CLEMENTI GRAND

Shuko Watanabe piano
Timothy Gaylard piano
Byron W. Petty wooden flute

What must it feel like to play an instrument that is one of seven known to exist in the world and is two hundred years old? Pianists Shuko Watanabe and Timothy Gaylard know this feeling, playing works written by Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) on a Clementi grand fortepiano in pieces on the Navona Records release, CLEMENTI GRAND.

The Clementi grand featured on this album was a gift by Dr. Lawrence Smith and his wife Ganelle to the Department of Music at Washington & Lee University in Lexington VA, and celebrates the bicentennial of its production this year. Some of Clementi’s most well-known pieces as well as some lesser-known works are presented, including four preludes from Musical Character Pieces, two of his didactic sonatinas, the famous Sonata in B-flat that Clementi played in Vienna at a contest with Mozart in 1781, two symphonic-sounding four-handed duets, and a rondo for keyboard and flute, featuring flutist Byron W. Petty. Watanabe and Gaylard honor this Clementi grand fortepiano with energy and enthusiasm.

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TENDRILS

Byron Petty composer
Robert Stewart composer
Peter Homans composer

The compositions of Byron Petty, Peter Homans, and Robert Stewart draw from a wide variety of influences, from Haydn to the Second Viennese School and Brahms to Stravinsky. Tendrils showcases the influences and skills of these three composers and highlights their ability to remain classical while utilizing modern concepts such as rotation, continuous development, and lyricism.

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PNOVA American Piano Series, Vol 2

The PnOVA American Piano Series makes great recordings in an acoustically perfect concert hall then delivers exciting live concert events featuring music on the recorded CD.

Promotional video for PnOVA Recordings’ volume 2 CD of American Piano Music, performed by internationally acclaimed British pianist, Martin Jones. PnOVA Recordings is a division of Mahin Media LLC.

The video features a live concert performance of the compositions recorded on this CD, in addition to commentary from Martin Jones, Bruce Mahin and the five composers whose works are included on the CD.

The promotional video footage and audio was filmed/recorded by John A. Palmer of Visual Images Media, Inc. The editing was completed by Jennifer M. Barker of Visual Images Media, Inc.

Composers in this volume:

• Jennifer Margaret Barker’s Moana was inspired by the streams, rivers, waterfalls, lakes and oceans of southeast Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. The title means ocean, sea, large lake in Maori.
• Kent Holliday’s Toccata Inquieta (Sp. restless) is a toccata-like composition featuring fleeting scale and arpeggio passages, changing meters, and rapidly repeated notes. It explores a wide variety in keyboard range and attempts to demonstrate the virtuosic elements of the traditional keyboard toccata.
• Mark Hagerty’s two movements from Clavier (Book Two) on this concert are Capriccio, a perpetual motion study where the theme is pulled apart and put back together, and Aria, which features an elaborate melody, a response to certain philosophical keyboard movements in Bach.
• Byron Petty’s Extractions consist of four works. Extraction no. 1 opens with an octatonic scale (alternating half and whole steps) which is developed throughout the first movement. The mood begins quietly, builds with upward motion then ends quietly – as if in the distance.
• Christopher Cook’s Dreamscape is a prelude inspired by a quote from Hyperion, a poem by John Keats.

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Traveler’s Tales

TRAVELER’S TALES was originally released in 2007 and features on-disc performances by flutist/composer Byron Petty, pianist Shuko Watanabe, clarinetist Roger Quigley, hornist Wallace Easter, guitarist Robert Trent, trumpeter Chris Magee, organist Daniel Brinson, and violinists Mark Taylor and Janice Vincent.

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